West Coast – Day Three – Iceburn
Have you ever just been in a quiet mood. It’s not really a bad mood. But then, it’s not really not a bad mood. But mostly, it’s just quiet. And I was quiet.
I think we skipped breakfast. It wasn’t till 11 or 12 that we actually got around to leaving the house. We headed, then, to an Indian restaurant downtown. Something “of India.” It was good. A little expensive, but really worth it.
After eating, we walked to the Zion bookstore that Ryan told me about. It’s three floors of new, used and rare books. Very fun. You’d think that I’d be burned out on bookstores… actually I thought that I would be. But I’m not. Just burned out on me running one, I guess.
I found a few old Prabhupada books and even a Bhaktipada book. But I purchased a little leaflet from the Sri Chaitanya Matha about the holy name. A lot of quotes from Bhaktisiddhanta and references from sastra. Great stuff. Only $1.
Keep in mind, this entire time, I’m hardly speaking a word. I think it’s bothering my guests, so I try to force conversation, but it’s just awkward, so I let it go.
After a stop at a Scottish store, we drive back home to wait for the Iceburn show. I’m pretty stoked about this. We watch a couple of episodes of Spaced and Mandy takes a little nap and finally we’re off.
The show is being held in the moronically named club called “The Venue.” The Canadian band Bowling for Soup is playing in the bar area, Iceburn, God’s Revolver and Stella Brass are playing in the first floor area.
Generally, I hate club shows. Just the idea. Sure, there can be great shows put on anywhere, but clubs just piss me off. And this one didn’t fail at that.
When we first attempted to go in, some no-dick security guards, fresh out of bootcamp, I’m sure, told me to empty my pockets. They told Mandy and Molly to empty theirs as well, but to no event. I had a pen in my pocket and no-dick told me “I’m going to have to keep the pen.” I honestly thought he was joking. He turned me around, opened my back, made some amazingly intelligent comment about me having a lot of notebooks and attempted to send me on my way. “Could I have my pen back?” “Find me after the concert.” “What? Are you kidding me? Oh that’s just ass.” And I walk away. Pissed.
I hate clubs. I hate security guards. Period. I understand that there isn’t a DIY venue in SLC, so in this case it was a necessary evil. But why do necessary evils have to be so fucking… EVIL?
So I lost my $4 pen to some poor little man trying to compensate. Thanks. Explode in hell.
Anyway, the show itself started with God’s Revolver. They do a sound check and we wait for more people to show up. At this point, there’s only 30ish paying. But as they filter in, it was something really neat to see. Most of the kids were 30 to 40 years old. Most of them were hugging each other like they haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade. For Stella Brass and Iceburn, they haven’t played together in about ten years. It explains a lot. It’s not just a reunion show for those bands, but a reunion show for the kids too.
I’m not usually a fan of reunion shows. 99% of the time they’re done for money, so they drag their wrinkled asses back on stage to pretend they’re still 20 years old. No thanks. But this show was quite the different case. I can’t begin to count the hugs. It was wonderful.
God’s Revolver played and they weren’t bad. The lead singer tried to pull off a stage persona, failed, but was really fun anyway. Tight band, sort of a rock & roll with lots of changes and stops. I dug it.
Right when Stella Brass started to play, a handful of really young kids come in. I think they’re with Iceburn. But it was great to see them. They were totally rocking out, but not in an obnoxious 8 – 10 year old way. They were sincerely into the music.
Stella Brass was good. You can tell that they had a varied career, a lot of different styles. Some were really my thing, others weren’t. The last song they played was brilliant. I’d love to get a recording of that.
For the first two bands, I hung back. But for Iceburn, I wanted to be up front. So I made my way through the 150ish or so kids and stood up front. Iceburn started with a sax intro from “Burn” or “Fall,” I can’t remember which. When they did this, the whole crowd fell silent. It was like some huge religious experience. Something big was happening here. And my god, it was. Without any stage banter, they went from song to song sometimes switching members, sometimes with a sax. They played through most of the Firon 12″ and then played “Poem of Fire.”
I then remembered just how hard it was to dance to something with constantly changing time signatures. But these guys were tight. They haven’t really played with this line up in fifteen or so years. It was like 1994, I swear. I figured that they were only going to do stuff from Firon, but they broke into “Iron I” (or is it called “Fe”?), played most or all of it and then went back into Burn/Fall. At one point they had to saxes on stage!
The whole thing was so worth it. It was even worth losing my pen over (though, it doesn’t excuse it).
I got some video of it. Here’s a clip from “Poem of Fire.”
If I was in a bad mood, this cleared it up. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. Iceburn played for about an hour, totally kicking our asses. Amazing.
We came back to the house and mostly just slept. Highlight of the trip so far. Brilliant.
